Martin Roth Populates a War Zone With Parakeets and Bullfrogs at Louis B. James

Live parakeets play a part in Martin Roth’s installation “untitled (debris)” at Louis B. James, as do bullfrogs.Credit
Courtesy of the artist and Louis B. James Gallery

Martin Roth works primarily with plants and animals. He’s used a signature Donald Judd steel-and-plexiglass box (or one he has recreated) as a habitat for snails, and released a goldfish in the Chinese Garden Court at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. At his last show at Louis B. James, visitors discovered that birdsong wafting through this near-empty gallery came from the basement, where microphones captured the sounds of dozens of birds in cages. The effect of the show was like that from a scene in a Dr. Seuss story: pleasing and charming. In this exhibition, Mr. Roth takes a different tack.

The gallery floor is covered with gray concrete rubble, some of it brought to New York (primarily smuggled in suitcases) from a combat zone on the border of Syria and Turkey. Perched above the rubble are bright green-gray parakeets, former pets that were given up by their owners. In the basement, which has been flooded with shallow water, bullfrogs raised for restaurant food sit on the ground, bathed in an eerie pink-red light. An ominous droning soundtrack pervades the basement. When the show closes, the birds will be transferred to an avian sanctuary and the frogs to a pond belonging to a friend of the artist.

Turning a gallery into a simulated ruin or war zone is not a new idea. Urs Fischer carved out a giant hole in Gavin Brown’s gallery in 2007, a kind of sublime vanity earthwork that functioned, supposedly, as neo-institutional critique. Mr. Roth’s ruin is more modest. Yet, within its scope, it is ambitious, forcing visitors to walk among the detritus of war rather than viewing it in pictures, and saving a few tiny, token lives in the process.

Correction: October 13, 2015

An art review on Friday about an exhibition of work by Martin Roth at the Louis B. James gallery in Manhattan misidentified the creature Mr. Roth once released in the Chinese Garden Court at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was a goldfish, not a goldfinch.

Martin Roth

‘untitled (debris)’

Louis B. James

143B Orchard Street­ Lower East Side

Through Oct. 18

A version of this review appears in print on October 9, 2015, on Page C23 of the New York edition with the headline: Martin Roth Populates a War Zone With Parakeets and Bullfrogs at Louis B. James. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe